A Non-Debate Using Non-Facts to Stir Up the Ignorant

Here in Amerika we swim in a cesspool of sanctioned criminality.

It  reaches its apex of absurdity when we demand prosecution of those who show us evidence of how we violate our own laws, our own Constitution.

And even as these perversions worsen, our media are complicit in a companion crime: the abuse and corruption of our very language into an Orwellian tool of doublespeak.

All of this is manifest in the Wikileaks "debate" -- which is not a debate at  all, but a manufactured hoo-haw in which the media  cheerlead the excuses of a government that has been caught with its pants down.

What's to debate? 

The documents are authentic.  No one disputes that.

If they expose criminal acts by our government and those acting on its orders, DO NOT PROSECUTE the perpetrators.  Instead, muscle a friendly government into trumping up rape charges against the messenger, tracking him down, and jailing him without bail or formal charges. These are criminal non-justice procedures that constitute the New American Way, like reserving to the executive branch the authority to order the  extra-judicial assassination of American citizens. "Gimme an A," the cheerleaders shout.

Contributing financial or other support to points of view that are not popular is a facet of free speech, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment.  If PayPal, Visa and MasterrCard close off the means for Amerikan citizens to exercise that freedom, arrest those who protest their actions. "Gimme an M . . ."

If the government issues Official Lies to refute the facts, do as Time magazine and other propaganda outlets do: publish the lies as fact.  When enlightened citizens challenge the media by showing them the truth, do as Time magazine and its sisters in sin do:  report the facts as a "side" in a "controversy."  Manufacture a "debate." "Gimme an E . . ."

Ron Paul, a conservative, libertarian, outspoken, Republican from Texas, of all places, has captured the nub of this situation.  It  came in the form of nine questions for Americans, at the end of a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives.  His nine questions are:

• Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
• Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
• Number 3: Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
• Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
• Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
• Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
• Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
• Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
• Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?

To imagine that today's United States is a moral force, an influence for good in the greater world around us is utter self-delusion.  Intelligent people all over the world are laughing at us, laughs of derision, as we flounder like Keystone Kops, chasing figments of imagination and slipping on moral  banana peels.

Answer the nine questions.  Think especially about the answer to No. 9.